The big trip to nowhere...

[Taigu]

Re: The big trip to nowhere...

When I read you Chet, I cannot help it, I find it d... clever, but at the same time, your voice, the tone of your voice and where it comes from... let's put it another way, a barking dog knows about the sound of MU, makes it sound BIG in the dark, but is short of one thing: being silently MU.

And yes,I agree with you, faith...And no, I don't agree with you, faith...

How can you-he-I express it without spoiling it?

Thank you for hanging around and sharing with us.

triple gassho


Taigu

[disastermouse]

Re: The big trip to nowhere...

It's hard to be silent on a discussion forum.

Part of this is probably a leg-stretching thing. I've spent a long while being told that my practice was inauthentic. Mostly, it was my time in LA and with Hannah.

I guess my approach could do to have a bit less pesticide and a bit more fertilizer. It's harder for me to sympathize with people who probably do need some faith and encouragement.

Chet

[Taigu]

Re: The big trip to nowhere...

Chet,

Your participation is really appreciated. Nothing wrong with leg-strectching. There is a lot of me in you, something quite passionate and radical I also share. I was suggesting that there is a way for people like us to scream Mu and yet find the silence undisrupted.

triple gassho again, brother


Taigu

[Rich]

Re: The big trip to nowhere...

It's not like anyone can explain to you what you are, what your experience is. Even if you don't understand anything, sitting is a good way to rest.
don't expect anything.

After cutting the grass around the shed yesterday, I went in the house and heard a tremendous cracking and boom. Looking out the door I saw a large tree lying where I had just walked. Just a reminder that 'Life is like a floating cloud which appears, death is like a floating cloud which disappears.' Sometimes sitting is like the one pure and clear thing that does not appear or disappear. Like the big trip to nowhere...
/Rich

[Dosho]

Re: The big trip to nowhere...

I've been away for a while mostly because of exactly the kind of uncertainty in my mind that this thread highlights. I appreciate your brutal honesty, Chet, and I take (most) things you say very seriously, despite the pit-bull mouth it sometimes comes from. But now you want to take away faith, too? I'm sure I'm missing something here, but what else are all us deluded, desperate assholes sitting and doing nothing every day, denying the tenets of all the bullshit religions we were raised on, supposed to use for a rope as we climb down this hole? After all the possible cute Zen cliches and mind-bending conceptual somersaults, video sitting, bantering of ethereal ideas and ego-suppressing straight-faced concentration on absolutely nothing, at the end of the day what the hell is supposed to get me through to the next one? There is no book, no dogma, no haiku, nothing to hold onto anymore, wandering in the dark waiting for the lights to come on. I thought faith told me to not give up, because there was something here, to which a lost person could aspire. :?:

Hey Tobiishi,

I may not be the right person to give a perspective here since I was never religious growing up and have never had much direct experience with more traditionally Western religions. So, faith is not a word I use regularly, but I will just say that when I have the most trust and optimism about the world as well as what helps me to get up off the mat after a terrible day is seeing simple acts of compassion, which I like to think our practice encourages in abundance. I still have a strong fear of death and what comes next for all of us, so I am no different there. When I need rope, I come here. When I need a lift, I look for guidance from others. When I feel hopeful, I try to offer some in return. It isn't much to fall back on, but the good things in life tend to be the most simple. Yes, it's zenny, but in my experience it tends to be true.

Gassho,
Dosho